Wednesday 5 February 2014

Yet another refutation shot down.

I know blitz isn't proper chess (think 20/20 if you are a cricket fan) but there is so much of it that sometimes ideas bubble up. For example I saw the following opening at the ACT Lightning Championship the other night. It began with 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cd 4.Nxd4 Qb6 5.Nc3 Bc5 6.Be3 Qxb2 
At first I was wondering if I was witnessing the refutation of 1.e4 as most of the moves seemed pretty standard, but after 7.Ndb5! I realised that half the worlds openings were safe after all. Turns out that this position has only occurred twice in my database, the first time in 1857, the second in 1991. The 1857 games was played between Morphy and Paulsen, with Morphy winning after 7. ... Bxe3 8.Rb1 Qxb1 9.Nxb1 Bf4 White lost even more drastically in the 1991 game after 7. ... Qb4 8.Rb1. The game I was watching instead continued 7. ... Bb4 8.Bd4 (8.Bd2! is stronger) when White had a huge advantage, but Black amazingly found enough tricks to eventually draw.

1 comment:

OzChess.com said...

Na4 also wins for white after black takes at b2.